


choice

by saramir



Category: True Detective
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1575014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saramir/pseuds/saramir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marty only needs one hand to count the number of choices he’s actually proud of making in his lifetime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	choice

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this bit of a drabble right after the finale but was holding onto it just in case I could piece together some other Rust/Marty fragments into a full fic, but I don't think that's going to happen, or at least not anytime soon. So, here's a thing.

Marty only needs one hand to count the number of choices he’s actually proud of making in his lifetime: marrying Maggie, helping her bring their two little girls into this twisted world, committing his career to CID. There go four perfectly good fingers. That last one, waggling his pinky, is more complex than it sounds, for sure. He’s not proud of every case he closed. Pride ain’t really the appropriate word for putting away a serial murderer. Justified, maybe. 

He’s not sure Rust realizes Marty really does listen to his philosophical yammering. Not all the time — there’s only so much a man can take, thinkin’ about life so hard as Rust does all the damn time. But sometimes Rust’s thoughts catch. Somewhere in the space between the passenger’s and driver’s seats, those old Cohle ideologies translate into something that finds its way to Marty’s sense of self. Even during those ten years they never spoke a word to one another, sometimes Marty would wake in the middle of the night with Rust’s voice in his head on a loop: _Time is a flat circle, time is a flat circle, time is—_

Those fragments that catched in his bones all those years ago have been changing him, little by little. ‘Cept it’s like how he didn’t notice he was ruining his marriage and all the women he used in the process, until it was already a disaster area a mile wide. Loving people has never been Marty’s problem; now, loving them the way they needed to be loved, that’s been a whole ‘nother story he didn’t know the plot of ‘til it was too late. 

With seventeen years of Rust sittin’ pretty damn ugly as the voice in his head, Marty doesn’t notice he’s a changed man until Rust is also sittin’ pretty damn ugly in front of him now, alive, another changed man. 

Rust’d said to Marty just the other day, hadn’t he: _Everybody’s got a choice._

Marty’s got one last finger left on that hand. You don’t choose your partner to begin with, but he’ll be damned if the last thing he’s proud of isn’t choosing to be Rust Cohle’s partner all over again.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on the tumblr over [here](http://dalek-in-heels.tumblr.com/)


End file.
